Obama to push oil pipeline in Okla.

CUSHING, Okla. — President Barack Obama is heading to the reddest of red states to tout the possible swift beginnings of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Obama will continue his energy tour here Thursday morning to drive home the message that he is receptive to the need for oil drilling and related infrastructure even if he hasn’t yet granted a presidential permit to a full Canada-to-Texas pipeline.

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The president started his trek on Wednesday in Nevada at a solar panel facility, criticizing the budget proposal from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and repeating his line about the GOP consisting of “charter members of the Flat Earth Society.”

Obama also went after Republicans on their own turf by touting his efforts to advance an “all of the above” energy policy supporting production of oil and gas. With U.S. production levels the highest they’ve been in eight years, he said, “I want everybody to be clear, because sometimes, when you listen to the news and when you listen to these other politicians, they seem to be a bit confused about what I’m saying.”

Obama is expected to publicly embrace part of the Keystone XL pipeline on Thursday by visiting a TransCanada facility and issuing an executive order on federal permitting of infrastructure projects that “will require agencies to make faster permitting and review decisions for vital infrastructure projects while protecting the health and vitality of local communities and the environment,” the White House said.

As for the portion of Keystone from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, the White House said Obama will “issue a specific memorandum in Cushing directing federal agencies to expedite the Cushing Pipeline.”

The White House has consistently said that Obama rejected the full Canada-to-Texas pipeline in January because Congress cut short the environmental review process and has cited bipartisan opposition to the proposed route through Nebraska.

White House energy adviser Heather Zichal held a conference call Tuesday with Midwestern lawmakers and said the administration is waiting for TransCanada to reapply, Cushing Mayor Evert Rossiter told POLITICO.

According to a rough transcript of the call obtained by POLITICO, Zichal simply restated the administration’s oft-spoken position that Obama will review TransCanada’s application and make a determination about whether it’s in the national interest after a new route is found in Nebraska.

Environmentalists called Thursday’s planned announcement a grievous letdown from just four months ago, when Obama heeded months of protests and sit-ins by postponing a decision on the entire 1,700-mile pipeline until at least 2013.

Now, the greens fear, approving Keystone’s southern portion could seriously undermine their larger effort to keep the pipeline from bringing Canadian tar sands oil to the United States.

“This announcement is a disappointment,” said Jane Kleeb, former national executive director of the Young Democrats of America who is executive director of activist group Bold Nebraska, which has attacked the pipeline as a threat to that state’s land and water and to the Earth’s climate as a whole.

That makes Keystone a major test of Obama’s green resolve, the activists say — in the same way that Republicans have elevated the pipeline to the top tier of their attacks on the president’s energy policies amid spiraling gasoline prices.

“If he thinks he can just turn to us and say, ‘Well, I gave it my best college try,’ no” Kleeb said, adding that any move to approve the pipeline’s international link to Canada would be “the last straw” for many environmentalists.

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CORRECTION: Corrected by: Bryan Doyle @ 03/22/2012 08:22 AM
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly attributed a statement made by American Energy Alliance leader Thomas Pyle.
Made 8:23 a.m.